The knowledge
by Brown hair and eyes
Summary: James Kirk always knew he would die alone. To be more accurate, James knew the exact day after all he had been told. Because what would you do if you knew the day you would die?


Jim's Death  
AN: This idea haunted me for a bit and I kind of liked the explanation of Jim's behavior throughout most of Into Darkness that it provided. I hope you enjoy and please review! (Because what would you do if you truely knew the day you would die...?)

James Kirk always knew he would die alone.  
To be more accurate, James knew the exact day.  
And this wasn't just a presumption caused by low self-esteem: he had been told.

It had been a visiting fortune teller, a rare thing in back of nowhere Iowa, who had spent the night in Riverside out in the fields before the farmers forced her to move on.

Jim and a group of older boys had snuck out, against their collective parents' wishes, except Wionana who was off planet and therefore couldn't care less, to see her – their first true act of rebellion. They had all mocked the sign outside her tent declaring that "I will teach you something you won't forget in a hurry" and then laughed at her when she told them quite seriously that she could tell them when they would die.

But once the woman had started going round the small group staring intensely into their eyes, as if she could see their very souls, before circling them once and whispering a date into their ears, once the incense smoke in the tent increased to fog like levels, once a feeling of strange power filled the room - it didn't seem so funny anymore.

Jim was penultimate in the group, but when she saw him she performed, not a quite double-take, but a curious look before whispering "2259" a brief pause and then "and all alone".

Jim didn't have a chance to reply before she had moved onto the last boy, Harold, who shouted, "What do you mean tomorrow? You're having me on!"

The group laughed and left comparing the supposed dates they had received, most of them far in the future, and calling her a fraud as they trooped back home. It was only a joke after all, some crazy old woman thinking she could tell them when they would die.

But then the next morning came. The sun came up as usual and the world kept on turning, and everything was normal - until the news broke that, due to a faulty electrical system, Harold's house had burnt to the ground with no survivors. Jim and the remaining boys never spoke of it, never acknowledged it - largely because if they didn't they could still pretend it was just coincidence or some freak of fate, that it was still a laugh. That the crazy old hag wasn't actually right, that they weren't going to die on the dates they had been given, dates that would now be engraved on their minds and impossible to forget.

Jim knew with a certainty in his bones that her predictions were right and he had less than 20 years to live. Well, he wasn't going to waste them stuck in school where they were teaching things he learnt years ago, instead he would have fun (and get away from Frank).  
The car was fun to drive.

At Tarsus, when it all came crashing down, knowing the date of his own death morphed from being a constant pressure to achieve (either grades or fun) to a sort of morbid reassurance to James.  
He wouldn't die here.  
Not now, not yet.  
He knew when his time was, and knowing with certainty that you will live through something can provide a great advantage.  
Not now, not yet.  
It was this mantra that occasionally gave him the strength in his faltering moments to attempt another food raid into patrolled territory, the courage to give up yet another mouthful of desperately needed rations to a younger kid.

Then, as he got thinner and more and more of his kids, his friends, his family, his responsibility, his _crew_, dropped like flies around him, it became a double-edged sword.  
_He_ wouldn't die here. But everyone he cared about, everyone he gave a toss about could and would. His aunt, uncle, cousins, neighbours had already gone and it wouldn't be long until his children would follow. James had read enough about starvation and malnutrition to recognise the chronic symptoms in the walking corpses surrounding him.  
He would be left all alone on a planet filled with the dead, living on the edge until he went mad.  
He would die alone.

Something deep down inside James Tiberius Kirk wouldn't let that happen.

In desperation and fierce anger at that fate that could not happen _- will_ not happen _- _ he headed a raid to the one place left that he _knew_ had food for the taking: Kudos' headquarters.

Unfortunately, it didn't go smoothly. They saw the man himself, surrounded by his loyal sycophants, as they were exiting the compound, but luckily Kevin had the wit to start the others running before the guards could react. As it turned out, pushing around and executing people too starved to put up a fight could negatively impact morale _and_ reaction times- who knew? - and they disappeared into the night.

Jim, separated as he was from them to set up their goodbye explosive distraction, had a moment's satisfaction for their speedy flight, it turned out the "if someone gets caught by the guards, get out of there and warn the others and _move_ before letting me launch a glorious rescue mission" speech he subjected them to before each raid (he had read about the need for repetition and redundancy in orders in a combat zone in some pre-federation manual yonks ago) paid off.

Except he was the one in need of rescue, which would mean they would hit a bit of a paradox around step 5. Oh well, he decided as the guards rapidly approached his position, it would be a shame to let good home-made explosive go to waste. So he set them on a five second timer and wasn't as if he would die in the following explosion, and he didn't, although something inside of him almost wished he had.

Over the next week he was in Kudos' company, although it was hard to judge time in the pain filled, horror filled hell he endured. At one point he had dared to advise the guards to add some monotony to break it all up a bit, they hadn't taken his constructive criticism well and broke his hands instead.  
After Kudos' third attempt at demanding the locations of his children (carefully avoiding the words "meddling" or "pesky" - apparently your prisoner giggling inanely at you didn't help maintain your carefully built reputation as supreme commander) he promised that he would make JT beg for death.

JT never did. For what was the point for begging for something you know couldn't be granted?  
That you can't receive?  
Not even as a blissful escape from pain, not even when you were desperate for it all to just _end?  
_So he escaped instead.  
By committing murder.  
There was no other choice, and after all, he couldn't die.  
Not yet.

Looking back that's probably part of why the little counseling he endured was ineffectual (aside from the fact they were treating a teenage survivor with a genius IQ as a little kid); they were trying to treat him for survivor's guilt – for feeling guilty for living when so many others didn't.  
Instead Jim had a much more complex cocktail of anger – at himself for not acting sooner, at Kudos for courting, if not plain engineering, the whole disaster, at the colony's adults for allowing it to happen, and for not actually thinking and resisting when the shooting started - instead of cowering in fear hoping they were on the right list after all.

When the Doctors informed him of the damage done to his body, that dozens of potentially deadly allergies had been triggered, he accepted the news without panic. It made sense. Not many people in this age die so young and are also alone – a fatal allergy attack made sense.

So when he finally arrived back on Earth he ran.  
From country to country, experiencing, learning, loving and loosing.  
Why should he settle down and get attached when he would die so soon? Surely it would be better, kinder, less selfish, and simply easier to not try at all.

When he finally stopped, exhausted from his years long flight, he found himself in Riverside again.

Drinking and flirting and fighting took his mind somewhat off his impending deadline.  
On occasion, when he was drunk out of his head, he could almost believe that it was all some trick, that he had more than a few years left to live. After all, Jim reckoned there were worse ways to die than from a night's excesses, and they haunt his dreams when he's sober, at least when he's drunk he can't make out the faces.

Then he had been challenged by Pike to join Starfleet and he had almost laughed hysterically to his face. They wanted to recruit a man who they would barely employ in the field before he died! It seemed fitting in a way that Jim should finally be like his father in one way; they would both die in Starfleet's uniform. So when Jim told Pike he would make training in three years not four, it wasn't just pride or bravo, it was necessity too. Jim wasn't going to spend the last months of his life in study or exams; he would spend it in the stars.

When the man threatened to throw up on him in the shuttle Jim had been amused to see another unlikely recruit amongst the starry eyed, cannon fodder. He liked McCoy because he was honest. Maybe it was selfish to make friends with "Bones" aware of his fate as he was, but Jim didn't care. It was nice to have a friend, especially one who recognised the signs of anaphylactic shock when it was wheezing in front of him and quick enough with a hypo-spray to prevent said person from serious hospitalisation.

He likes Starfleet in a way. The lectures, the training, the flirting, the fighting with other halves' he may have accidentally offended by the flirting, the drinking with McCoy, the hacking (to make sure he and McCoy share a dorm and at least some classes, and, you know, for _fun_), and the debating (which he always felt the need to stress that he had decided to join before he heard Uhura was going) filled up his time and sometimes actually his head up enough that he could enjoy himself.

Then the whole Kobayashi Maru debacle had come and performed a perfect job of upsetting the balance of denial and work he had going on. The Vulcan actually claimed that the aim of the test was not to win, but to face fear and accept the possibility of death. If Jim hadn't been so angry about the test he would probably appreciated the irony that the universe was providing him with a little more.

The next couple of days went through in a blaze.

Becoming a stowaway on the Enterprise. Lightning Storm in space. The destruction of the fleet, with so many dead, but no time to dwell on the loss. Skydiving onto the platform. The destruction of Vulcun. Being exiled. Meeting _old_ Spock, who's Jim didn't seem to have the same death sentence he did, as well as having a father the lucky... _well,_ technically not a bastard. Meeting Scotty, transwarping onto the Enterprise, pulling dirty tricks on Spock, taking command, the fight for Earth, rescuing Pike - creating a _black hole_!  
How many people can claim to have done that?  
And then, of course, escaping said Black hole.  
And consequently handling the _numerous_ damage reports, which almost made you think that Spaceships weren't designed for escaping hypothetical blackholes. And, of course, starting to limp back towards earth.

It didn't leave him time to think, just to react - and Jim loved it.  
He decided.  
He was going to Captain the Enterprise until the day he died. Which shouldn't too hard for Starfleet to swallow, after all, Spock is ready to take over if Jim screws up too badly. Or, more correctly, when.

He'd always tried not to think about how it will effect Bones when he… when he goes.  
A small part of him finds it strange how he can barely say the words when he had calmly accepted his fate for years – is what they mean having something to live for? When it makes you hurt when you think of the future where you will lose it all?  
He'd thought about telling the truth to Bones, to warn him of what's to come. In fact, Jim actually believes he once, in a drunken stupor, told Bones that he knew would die alone but even surrounded by the comforting buzz of alcohol he didn't have the courage to tell him the truth.

Thinking about it, it's probably for the best that Bones stays ignorant, Jim couldn't think of a way to tell him that doesn't sound insane or suicidal anyway. And Jim doesn't want to inflict on his friend the hopelessness, the helplessness that he feels about his fate.

He just hoped that Bones will be okay in the end, that Bones doesn't misguidedly blame himself for whatever happens. But J. knows that hoping means squat in the end.

Jim retaliates by throwing himself into his work, his fun, giving 100% and resting (well, wasting) as little time as he can. He befriendeds Sulu, flirts against (not with) Uhura – mostly to keep his skills in shape, tinkers with Scotty and plays the secret geek with Checkov. He challenges Spock often; in work and to chess, in the vain hope that he will recreate some of the friendship he felt in those stolen, treasured memories, for what else would be the memories were Jim Kirk lives a long, full, happy life?

He also spent as much time as he could with Bones without neglecting his duties as Captain.

Jim is aware that Bones knows something is off, Jim knows that even he isn't as usually reckless as he'd been acting over the last year but if Jim stops and actually thinks about how his time is almost up he knows he will break. He's spent all those years alone to avoid the pain of losing people and he's just gone to gain a crew and friends. The worst part was he couldn't decide what was worse. Then again, could there ever be an easy, nice way to die?

Jim didn't regret his actions over the whole volcano disaster. His motivations were complex but boiled down to three reasons.  
One, he wasn't going to let his legacy, his final actions in his Captaincy be a destroyed planet and thousands of lives through inaction and blind obedience to orders.  
Two, he couldn't let Spock die because he thought as him as a friend and Jim would never let his friends die without doing anything, for that has been one of the foundations James has been built on since Tasurus IV itself.  
And three, who else would captain the Enterprise well, who would accept Scotty's still as necessary, bare with Bones verbal rhetorical, accept Checkov's youth and genius, mentor Sulu in subtle awesomeness, appreciate Uhura's tongue – look after his crew, except for the Vulcun who cares for it?

After his anger at his captaincy being lost for the last few precious days he had left died, Jim knew that the sacrifice was worth it. If Spock lives then the crew could grieve and continue and be better led for it. Jim knew that his position was temporary anyway, but it still hurt. Then Pike had came in the bar and informed him that he could still remain on the Enterprise for his last days, and that pleased him, but also worried him – for wasn't he told he would die alone? What if his crew got dragged in too? What if they died as well?

Jim doesn't get much time to think in the following hours but he remembers how he cried tears of sorrow, of anger, of unfairness when Pike died. Because he was the one who was supposed to die next not Pike, a man who had been a mentor to him, a comforter, and a fath- friend.

Not giving time to grieve, the meeting with Marcus and the journey and the fight with the Kilingons and Khan shortly followed.  
Jim fought hard because this is the day he dies.  
But he will fight like a cornered rat to deny it, to prolong his life for just a little longer.  
Jim always figured he would go out of this world the way he came into it: kicking and screaming and covered in blood. Of course Jim's vitals were off when McCoy measured them – grief, multiple abrasions and knowledge that this is his death day will do that to a man, but he would be dead later that day, so he wouldn't let McCoy fuss over it.  
Told him it was nothing.

It seems like the universe is cheating when the Enterprise starts falling from the sky.  
That's unfair because Jim had accepted that he will die, but why bring his crew into it?  
Why hurt them at all?  
Jim was left hopeless for a second until it all fell into place: he will die today and will die alone.  
The only way that could happen is if the Enterprise doesn't crash, and the only way to stop that from happening is to restart the engines, and the only way to do that is to use the last resort manual at the core.  
Jim could do that.  
He ran with Scotty as the Enterprise died around him.  
Listening carefully to the last minute instructions about realigning the core before promptly knocking Scotty out.  
His only wishes as he entered the radiation flooded chamber are that he isn't too late and that it won't hurt too much. Only one of them is granted.

He smiled before he dragged himself towards the exit; mission accomplished so he might as well make clear up easier...  
He was dying now.  
It's harder to concentrate above the pain, to get his body to obey him, to see what he's doing, to remember what is happening.  
He was aware he was in the airlock, but couldn't recall how he got there. Then he saw something: Spock was there. He was saying something to Scotty, something about decontamination? The door, Jim stretches, ignoring the pain, and uses the controls to close it. He didn't want to mess it up even further for Spock. There's something important he should ask about, something big... the Enterprise.

Before he goes, Jim wants to make sure the ship is okay, after all, she meant so much to him. Spock's reply reassured him, Spock can handle her now. Jim's proud of Spock (even though he has to right to be): he's clever, cunning even, and Jim wants him to know that now while he has the chance.

It gradually became harder to think, and breathing took up all his concentration.  
He told Spock as much of the truth as he can bare to, after all it is "logical" for the one marked for execution to do what needs to be done. A wave of pain reminds him that he's dying, and he found it odd how he can forget that- isn't death supposed to focus the mind? He got scared towards the end, even with his life's worth of preparation. It's a long shot but he asked the Vulcan anyway "teach me not to feel" - he's always been a fast learner.

But no. Spock's failing to not be scared. And he's upset.  
Jim knows his brain's breaking down, can feel his thoughts slowing to treacle (he'd never have one of Bones' southern desserts again...) but that's bad right?

He tried to tell Spock the truth, to ask him to do what he cannot now, to look after his people but Spock says something different: "because I am your friend". And that's the gift indeed for a Vulcun to say so, and it's the truth and it's so much effort to talk now that Jim let's it pass.

Spock knows to look after the crew, has always known to and will make a good Captain.

He'll captain the Enterprise.

Jim reached out... and finds the glass in front and realises he's alone but not, then Spock reaches out and wishes him "live long and prosper" and Jim is... happy.  
You're being ill- illo- silly Mr Spock -it's too late for that. He returns the symbol and means it.  
"Peace and long life" Spock.

May it be longer than mine...

Jim awoke.

That's odd, he thinks, rather absurdly. Didn't I die?

He hears Bones. Is he dead? Don't let him be dead too! Saying something about being barely dead. So he did die.  
That's a bit of a relief to be honest. One death, tick. Continue with afterlife.

But then why is he awake?  
Why can he still see Bones and… Spock?  
Why does he still _hurt _so much? Ah, death by radiation, numerous explosions, fights.  
That's one question answered. His head is _killing _ him.  
Just like the Klingons and Marcus and Khan and his ship tried to earlier...

There's something he wants to say... "thanks for saving my life".

It doesn't really make sense but his head, his _body_ hurts so and Spock did wish him to "live long and prosper" and it's kind of worked as Jim was probably still alive so its only polite to say thanks right?  
His skin and bones are aching (not grumpy Bones – though he looks pretty tired too). Maybe he should take a hint and go back to sleep. He can work out how he's alive in the morning.

James Tiberius Kirk has a morning tomorrow because he's alive and only live people have mornings. He'll have a life full of mornings to look forwards to, that is, until he dies but at least this time there isn't a schedule. He can think tomorrow as soon as he wakes up...

Jim decides he can live with that.


End file.
